Perspectives

September began with across-the-board declines in response to uncertainties related to trade tariffs with China and the NAFTA negotiations with Canada.  Last week the Dow Jones Industrial Average led the markets with a fractional 0.19% loss; the S&P 500® Index declined 1.03%, the Nasdaq fell 2.55% and the Russell 2000® Index lost 1.58%. On Wednesday, trade negotiations between the U.S. and Canada resumed but the parties had not reached an agreement as the week ended; the pressure builds… View More

NAFTA negotiators remain upbeat about the prospects of a deal. This will be an "agreement in principle" rather than a full deal which means that while it won't be signed, it can still trigger the formal Congressional review so that Mexico's current President is able to sign it before his term ends and he leaves office. However, on Friday, negotiations between the U.S. and Canada appear stalled in meeting the White House’s imposed deadline. Even so, President Trump plans to notify Congress o… View More

Last week you heard a lot about the longest bull market in our countries history. The Purest definition of a bull market is “a market advance without a pull back or sell of greater than 20%”. We do not necessarily agree with the "longest bull market" headlines from last week. Both 2011 and 2015 witnessed massive drawdowns at the stock level with over 70% of issues down 20% in 2011 and 63% during 2015. The Russell 2000 was down by 30% and 27% in each respective year and global equities also e… View More

The major indices, with the exception of the Nasdaq, ended higher for the week despite heightened volatility.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.41%; the S&P 500® and the Russell 2000® Indices rose .59% and .36%, respectively.  The Nasdaq’s -.29% decline was due, in part, to a sell-off in Tesla; the company disclosed an SEC subpoena of directors following the tweet from CEO Elon Musk about a pending deal to take the company private; the SEC was already investigating potentially m… View More

Small and Mid-Cap companies have been the best performing sector of the market this year and last week was no exception. The Russell 2000® Index, last week’s best performer, rose 0.80% followed by the Nasdaq which gained 0.35%.  The S&P 500® Index and the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.25% and 0.59%, respectively.  Small cap stocks continued to perform well; strong earnings reports and upwardly revised guidance supported the momentum provided by the economy.  A survey among econo… View More

With the mid-term elections approaching, an ongoing tariff war with China, and an apparent soft patch in Europe, we continue to ask ourselves the question of whether we’re on track for the longest expansion in U.S. History or at the end of the road. To help answer this question, we look at various economic data points to understand the US economy’s trajectory.  During the month of June, we saw robust employment gains in the US with 213,000 new jobs.  Coupled with the growth in jobs, US wa… View More

Lawrence Kudlow, President Trump's head economic advisor, coined the phrase, “Corporate profits are the mother’s milk of the stock market."  Without profits, stocks will not go up in value.  Corporate profits for Q2 have been coming in better than expected and should be leading the market higher. We believe current trade negations and the mid-term elections are currently weighing the market down. President Trump is pivoting away from trade spats with traditional US allies towards greate… View More

We wanted to bring you this news as it unfolds. We have noted that the Trump Administration is considering indexing capital gains taxes to inflation. Under the proposal Mnuchin has the legal authority to change the indexing of capital gains taxes from nominal terms to inflation-adjusted terms, without an act of Congress. The proposal would eliminate taxing inflationary capital gains by indexing that gain to inflation and taxing only the after-inflation gain. Estimates suggest that the tax chang… View More

Our view over the past four weeks was that the Trump Administration needed a win on trade (outside of China) to build support for larger escalation with China. This process is now in place. After weeks of rising trade tensions, the U.S. and EU meeting last week resulted in some rare positive trade-related news. It is unclear whether this marks a broader shift away from protectionism or is an isolated event. But at this point, the bar for positive surprises is so low that even news that negotiati… View More

We continue to believe that there is a disconnect between the strong US economy / robust corporate earnings and the wall-of-worry (trade, yield curve, debt levels, mid-term elections, etc.). Politics are trumping economics this midterm election year, but our base case remains intact: investors are underestimating the stimulative effects of fiscal stimulus and regulatory easing while overestimating the potential negative impacts of a trade war, a rotation (not a fade) in global growth is underwa… View More